Yesterday, I got to unbox the first drone hardware; since my last post, I picked out a build based on Stan Humphries’s video “How I Build Custom Light Show Drones…” the build consists of mostly HolyBro components, while not being cheap they offered a reliable and well-documented parts compared to the competitors or parts I would have gotten cheaper off AliExpress.
The setup for the first drone is more expensive than what you would want for an entire fleet of 100+ drones. However, it is a good testing platform for getting hands-on with the Skybrush suite.
H-RTK F9P GNSS Series
Pixhawk 6c
S500 V2 Kits
5000mAh 4S 60C Lipo
Wifi Module (3DR)
*Many more components contributed to the build, but I won’t include the full list here. Once I’ve got a better idea of a scalable drone build, I’ll share the BoM.
This was my first time unboxing, so I couldn’t fully assemble every component, but it gave me a good idea of what would be required for the building process. It also shocked me how large the batteries would be and how cheap they were for their capacity. I loosely hand-assembled the drone development kit with the onboard RTK module and double-checked the correct connectors that came for wiring.
At first glance, it seems that there will be minimal soldering work: replacing the XT90 with an XT60, soldering the battery power module to the PDB (the drone’s built-in power distribution PCB), and Soldering the LEDs to the BEC (Battery Eliminator Circuit that regulates the voltage to a lower amount for powering LEDs).
That’s my update! I’ll post minor updates on Discord or new information I find helpful for reference.
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